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Breathing: Chaos and Poetry
The increasingly chaotic rhythm of our respiration, and the sense of suffocation that grows everywhere: an essay on poetical therapy.
Since the hopeful days of the Occupy movement, many things have changed in the respiration of the world, and we have entered a cycle of spasm, despair, and chaos. Breathing is a book about the increasingly chaotic rhythm of our respiration, about the sense of suffocation that grows everywhere.“I can't breathe.” These words panted by Eric Garner before dying, strangled by a police officer on the streets of Staten Island, capture perfectly catching the overall sentiment of our time. In Breathing, Franco "Bifo" Berardi comes back to the subject that was the core of his 2011 book, The Uprising: the place of poetry in the relations between language, capital, and possibility. In The Uprising, he focuses on poetry as an anticipation of the trend toward abstraction that led to the present form of financial capitalism. In Breathing, he tries to envision poetry as the excess of the field of signification, as the premonition of a possible harmony inscribed in the present chaos. The Uprising was a genealogical diagnosis. Breathing is an essay on poetical therapy. How we deal with chaos, as we know that those who fight against chaos will be defeated, because chaos feeds upon war? How do we deal with suffocation? Is there a way out from the corpse of financial capitalism?
Since the hopeful days of the Occupy movement, many things have changed in the respiration of the world, and we have entered a cycle of spasm, despair, and chaos. Breathing is a book about the increasingly chaotic rhythm of our respiration, about the sense of suffocation that grows everywhere.“I can't breathe.” These words panted by Eric Garner before dying, strangled by a police officer on the streets of Staten Island, capture perfectly catching the overall sentiment of our time. In Breathing, Franco "Bifo" Berardi comes back to the subject that was the core of his 2011 book, The Uprising: the place of poetry in the relations between language, capital, and possibility. In The Uprising, he focuses on poetry as an anticipation of the trend toward abstraction that led to the present form of financial capitalism. In Breathing, he tries to envision poetry as the excess of the field of signification, as the premonition of a possible harmony inscribed in the present chaos. The Uprising was a genealogical diagnosis. Breathing is an essay on poetical therapy. How we deal with chaos, as we know that those who fight against chaos will be defeated, because chaos feeds upon war? How do we deal with suffocation? Is there a way out from the corpse of financial capitalism?
160 pages, Paperback
First published October 26, 2018
39 people are currently reading
900 people want to read
About the author
Franco "Bifo" Berardi
127 books455 followersFranco "Bifo" Berardi (born 2 November 1948 in Bologna, Italy) is an Italian Marxist theorist and activist in the autonomist tradition, whose work mainly focuses on the role of the media and information technology within post-industrial capitalism. Berardi has written over two dozen published books, as well as a more extensive number of essays and speeches.
Unlike orthodox Marxists, Berardi's autonomist theories draw on psychoanalysis, schizoanalysis and communication theory to show how subjectivity and desire are bound up with the functioning of the capitalism system, rather than portraying events such as the financial crisis of 2008 merely as an example of the inherently contradictory logic of capitalist accumulation. Thus, he argues against privileging labour in critique and says that "the solution to the economic difficulty of the situation cannot be solved with economic means: the solution is not economic." Human emotions and embodied communication becomes increasingly central to the production and consumption patterns that sustain capital flows in post-industrial society, and as such Berardi uses the concepts of "cognitariat" and "info labour" to analyze this psycho-social process. Among Berardi's other concerns are cultural representations and expectations about the future — from proto-Fascist Futurism to post-modern cyberpunk (1993). This represents a greater concern with ideas and cultural expectations than the determinist-materialist expression of a Marxism which is often confined to purely economic or systemic analysis.
(via Wikipedia)
Unlike orthodox Marxists, Berardi's autonomist theories draw on psychoanalysis, schizoanalysis and communication theory to show how subjectivity and desire are bound up with the functioning of the capitalism system, rather than portraying events such as the financial crisis of 2008 merely as an example of the inherently contradictory logic of capitalist accumulation. Thus, he argues against privileging labour in critique and says that "the solution to the economic difficulty of the situation cannot be solved with economic means: the solution is not economic." Human emotions and embodied communication becomes increasingly central to the production and consumption patterns that sustain capital flows in post-industrial society, and as such Berardi uses the concepts of "cognitariat" and "info labour" to analyze this psycho-social process. Among Berardi's other concerns are cultural representations and expectations about the future — from proto-Fascist Futurism to post-modern cyberpunk (1993). This represents a greater concern with ideas and cultural expectations than the determinist-materialist expression of a Marxism which is often confined to purely economic or systemic analysis.
(via Wikipedia)
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June 27, 2019
A nugget:
‘Americans have chosen Donald Trump because he perfectly embodies that which is absolutely impenetrable by irony, absolutely inaccessible by culture, by humanity, by compassion. Trump’s dumbness is an effect of the self-loathing that stems from the disconnect between America’s mythology of infinite potency and its experienced reality of supreme impotence. The cynicism of Trumpism grows from the neoliberal Empire of Chaos; it is an aggressive self-assertion of losers who identify with a perceived winner, of humiliated people who identify with a humiliator in chief.’ - Franco Berardi, ‘Breathing’
‘Americans have chosen Donald Trump because he perfectly embodies that which is absolutely impenetrable by irony, absolutely inaccessible by culture, by humanity, by compassion. Trump’s dumbness is an effect of the self-loathing that stems from the disconnect between America’s mythology of infinite potency and its experienced reality of supreme impotence. The cynicism of Trumpism grows from the neoliberal Empire of Chaos; it is an aggressive self-assertion of losers who identify with a perceived winner, of humiliated people who identify with a humiliator in chief.’ - Franco Berardi, ‘Breathing’
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June 1, 2021Franco ''Bifo'' Berardi, takip ettiğim yazarlardan birisi. Yaşadığımız çağa dair analizlerini ve fikirlerini okumak, diğer yazar ve düşünürleri nasıl sentezlediğini görmek hep ufkumu açıyor.
Bu kitabında da nefes, kaos ve şiir gibi kavramların yanında; ritm, spazm, kehanet, panik gibi kavramlar üzerinden çağımızın psiko-sosyal, politik, kültürel- kısacası her türlü okumasını yapıyor. Kitapta Bifo, nefesin ortak ritmini, evrensel soluğu aramaya çıkmış, vardığı yer ise şiirin kaosuna izin verecek cesaret olmuş. Yer yer distopik bir dünya görüşüne kaysa da, Bifo'nun kanısı geçmişte çağımızı en iyi okuyanların distopya yazarları olduğı yönünde. Sadece kafanızı bulandırmak için bile okuyabilirsiniz.
Son zamanlarda yogaya yoğunlaşmamla nefesle ilişkim epey değişti. Özellikle solunum yollarını etkileyen, hepimize maskeler taktıran evrensel bir salgının insanca yorumlanması sonucu iyice nefessiz kaldığımız düşünüldüğünde, nefes üzerine düşünmek, kendi nefesinin özgün ritmini yeniden bulmak ve en önemlisi nefes aldığımızı hatırlamak (sahi hep oradaydı?) gibi merakı olanlara tavsiyemdir. Yer yer dili zor olsa da, kesinlikle size bir şeyler katacaktır. Kitapta Deleuze, Guattari, Jonathan Franzen gibi yazarların yanı sıra, Hint felsefesine de sıklıkla değiniliyor. Bir de Bifo, Türkiye siyasetini de takip ettiği için, yer yer Erdoğan'ın ismi de geçiyor kitapta. Farklı bir okuma için de uğranabilir.
Bu kitabı neden mi okumalısınız: birincisi yaşadığımız herhangi bir sıkıntı, kaygı, bunalımın kökenlerini anlamak ve nihayetinde yalnız olmadığımızı görmek için.
İkincisi, kendi kaçış çizgilerimizi çizebilmek adına güzel bir rehber olduğu için.
Üçüncüsü, ne aradığını bilmez halde bir şeyler arıyormuş gibi görünürken, belki de önce neyi kaybettiğimizi bulmamız gerektiği için.
Dördüncüsü, bilimkurgu/distopya okuru olduğunuz ve bu türe yoğun ilgi duyduğunuz için.
Beşincisi, okuduğunuzu gördüğümde yaşayacağım mutluluğu bana tattırmak için :)
Özellikle, kitabın henüz corona diye bir salgının olmadığı 2017 yılında yazıldığı düşünüldüğünde, belki de analizlerine daha çok kulak vermeliyiz dedirtiyor. Çizdiklerim içninden kararsızca seçtiğim birkaç alıntı ekliyorum.
''İçinde bulunduğumuz nefessizlik durumuna ithaf edilmiş olan bu yeni kitapta, boğulmaktan kaçınmanın yegane yolu olarak şiir metaforuna geri dönüyorum.''
''Ne var ki, bedenler artık hesaplama tarafından yönetilen bir dünyada yaşıyor. Hesaba dayalı teoloji de toplumsal yaşamı ve dili kapsamakta, bir belirlenim çağlayanı oluşmaktadır. Bu belirlenim alanında, bedenler, ancak hüküm süren matematik teolojisinin düzeninde uyumlularsa etkin şekilde hareket edebilirler; aksi taktider indirgenemez artıklar olarak ötekileştirilirler. ''
''Birlikte nefes almak tehlikeli hale geldiğinde, herkes tek başına nefes almak zorunda kaldı; bireysel solunum ritmi ekonomik rekabetin hızını takip etmek zorunda kaldı.''
''Fakat bu hakikat ancak çölde vahalar bulabildiğimiz müddetçe korkutucu olmaktan çıkar: Dostluk, aşk
entellektüel ve erotik paylaşım, ittifak, ortak bir peyzajın izdüşümü. Bu vahalar, duyumsal bilinçliliğin ve ortak tahayyülün önkoşuludur.''
EK: Bundan birkaç kitap önce Tom Robbins'in Ağaçkakan'ının okudum ve bu iki kitabın birbirlerinin farklı izdüşümleri olduklarını düşünmeden edemiyorum nedense.
Bu kitabında da nefes, kaos ve şiir gibi kavramların yanında; ritm, spazm, kehanet, panik gibi kavramlar üzerinden çağımızın psiko-sosyal, politik, kültürel- kısacası her türlü okumasını yapıyor. Kitapta Bifo, nefesin ortak ritmini, evrensel soluğu aramaya çıkmış, vardığı yer ise şiirin kaosuna izin verecek cesaret olmuş. Yer yer distopik bir dünya görüşüne kaysa da, Bifo'nun kanısı geçmişte çağımızı en iyi okuyanların distopya yazarları olduğı yönünde. Sadece kafanızı bulandırmak için bile okuyabilirsiniz.
Son zamanlarda yogaya yoğunlaşmamla nefesle ilişkim epey değişti. Özellikle solunum yollarını etkileyen, hepimize maskeler taktıran evrensel bir salgının insanca yorumlanması sonucu iyice nefessiz kaldığımız düşünüldüğünde, nefes üzerine düşünmek, kendi nefesinin özgün ritmini yeniden bulmak ve en önemlisi nefes aldığımızı hatırlamak (sahi hep oradaydı?) gibi merakı olanlara tavsiyemdir. Yer yer dili zor olsa da, kesinlikle size bir şeyler katacaktır. Kitapta Deleuze, Guattari, Jonathan Franzen gibi yazarların yanı sıra, Hint felsefesine de sıklıkla değiniliyor. Bir de Bifo, Türkiye siyasetini de takip ettiği için, yer yer Erdoğan'ın ismi de geçiyor kitapta. Farklı bir okuma için de uğranabilir.
Bu kitabı neden mi okumalısınız: birincisi yaşadığımız herhangi bir sıkıntı, kaygı, bunalımın kökenlerini anlamak ve nihayetinde yalnız olmadığımızı görmek için.
İkincisi, kendi kaçış çizgilerimizi çizebilmek adına güzel bir rehber olduğu için.
Üçüncüsü, ne aradığını bilmez halde bir şeyler arıyormuş gibi görünürken, belki de önce neyi kaybettiğimizi bulmamız gerektiği için.
Dördüncüsü, bilimkurgu/distopya okuru olduğunuz ve bu türe yoğun ilgi duyduğunuz için.
Beşincisi, okuduğunuzu gördüğümde yaşayacağım mutluluğu bana tattırmak için :)
Özellikle, kitabın henüz corona diye bir salgının olmadığı 2017 yılında yazıldığı düşünüldüğünde, belki de analizlerine daha çok kulak vermeliyiz dedirtiyor. Çizdiklerim içninden kararsızca seçtiğim birkaç alıntı ekliyorum.
''İçinde bulunduğumuz nefessizlik durumuna ithaf edilmiş olan bu yeni kitapta, boğulmaktan kaçınmanın yegane yolu olarak şiir metaforuna geri dönüyorum.''
''Ne var ki, bedenler artık hesaplama tarafından yönetilen bir dünyada yaşıyor. Hesaba dayalı teoloji de toplumsal yaşamı ve dili kapsamakta, bir belirlenim çağlayanı oluşmaktadır. Bu belirlenim alanında, bedenler, ancak hüküm süren matematik teolojisinin düzeninde uyumlularsa etkin şekilde hareket edebilirler; aksi taktider indirgenemez artıklar olarak ötekileştirilirler. ''
''Birlikte nefes almak tehlikeli hale geldiğinde, herkes tek başına nefes almak zorunda kaldı; bireysel solunum ritmi ekonomik rekabetin hızını takip etmek zorunda kaldı.''
''Fakat bu hakikat ancak çölde vahalar bulabildiğimiz müddetçe korkutucu olmaktan çıkar: Dostluk, aşk
entellektüel ve erotik paylaşım, ittifak, ortak bir peyzajın izdüşümü. Bu vahalar, duyumsal bilinçliliğin ve ortak tahayyülün önkoşuludur.''
EK: Bundan birkaç kitap önce Tom Robbins'in Ağaçkakan'ının okudum ve bu iki kitabın birbirlerinin farklı izdüşümleri olduklarını düşünmeden edemiyorum nedense.
August 29, 2019
Whew. Have been admiring Franco “Bifo” Berardi from afar the past few months, and, I have to say, this as my first exposure to his intellect is both a blessing and a curse. I am totally enamored with his brain and expert means of synthesis in ways that both upend academic orthodoxy and transform what is functionally possible. I’ll definitely be devouring the rest of his prolific writings in due time, to say the least. Glad to number myself as a Bifo convert, although both my wallet and my perception may regret it before long (both because his books are relatively hard to come by without pirating, which I hate because screen-reading is shit, or without succumbing to Amazon or massive indie booksellers like Powell’s, which is almost as bad with regard to shipping distance and the bald reality of capitalist outgrowth in book commoditization... as well as because there’s a bleak truth to autonomist thinking that is perhaps easy to distill as grimly nihilistic; I prefer to think of it as wholly liberatory in the emancipatory sense: that true liberation lies in our disciplined but nonlinear and intrinsically unique (yet never-ending) refinements of our consciousness, both collective and individual, and unabashed probing of their complements, the collective unconscious and individuated unconscious, on the road to what Berardi terms the “tuning in to singular becoming with the cosmic game.”
January 26, 2024
some cute moments, but resoundingly old farty. the main idea seems to be that phones make us less attuned to vibes, not kidding 💀 anyone who says the internet has inspired "sexual anorexia" in people has clearly not seen how gay men use the internet. the paragraph about pokemon go is psychotically dumb😭😭😭😭 berardi is most successful when he's purely theoretical, describing the dementia-inducing chaos of technofinancial capitalism, and poetry's potential to befriend the movement of modern chaos by expanding the limits of the world via language. like yeah i agree, build a bridge, sure. any time he tries to ground himself in reality, either social or digital, it's literally silly lmao. worth a read but tbh let me hear what byung-chul han has to say, hoping he's got some better advice/theory than "unplug your laptop." ultimately im not taking shit from a jonathan franzen stan 😂😂😂
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May 15, 2022Curious little one which reminds me to read more Hölderlin. I have very real ups and downs with Bifo Berardi here but it's interesting and probably worth the time especially if one has a general understanding of FBB's Deleuzo-Guattarian background. Found his read on Hegel (and to a lesser extent, Baudrillard) pretty crass.
I think it's fair to say that this text loses sight of the poetry aspect during the midsection and has a general look at 21st century politics. Žižekian ring. Reading recent leftish books on politics seems increasingly difficult to me - anything written before 2018 seems quite divorced from the present and I don't think that's just the character of time passing. Anyway, Breathing was published in 2018 and I think evades most of the embarrassing 2017ish breathlessness (pun etc etc) though we do see the usual histrionics about the trump regime and irony which we've all seen before endlessly and it's not unique in the conclusions there. I feel that time was mostly wasted and FBB could have put his energies into something more structurally useful concerning the future but alas.
Probably I came about quite sceptical because Auden was in mind the entire time and I never felt the case for poetry quite came to a conclusion. Not that FBB ought to or even could provide a poetic praxis that could dispel. There are really interesting angles that come about in this text and I feel I'll come back to it some time. I'd read more Berardi.
I think it's fair to say that this text loses sight of the poetry aspect during the midsection and has a general look at 21st century politics. Žižekian ring. Reading recent leftish books on politics seems increasingly difficult to me - anything written before 2018 seems quite divorced from the present and I don't think that's just the character of time passing. Anyway, Breathing was published in 2018 and I think evades most of the embarrassing 2017ish breathlessness (pun etc etc) though we do see the usual histrionics about the trump regime and irony which we've all seen before endlessly and it's not unique in the conclusions there. I feel that time was mostly wasted and FBB could have put his energies into something more structurally useful concerning the future but alas.
Probably I came about quite sceptical because Auden was in mind the entire time and I never felt the case for poetry quite came to a conclusion. Not that FBB ought to or even could provide a poetic praxis that could dispel. There are really interesting angles that come about in this text and I feel I'll come back to it some time. I'd read more Berardi.
June 3, 2020
This book was already annoying me when I got to the ENTIRE CHAPTER on Franzen's Purity, including this gem: "Reading Franzen's work is the best way to gain insight into what is happening to the American mind, and particularly to the American unconscious, during the reign of Trump." W.T.A.F? Everything about this book appeals to me in theory, but in reality it's too much word salad and overconfidence from someone with an embarrassingly narrow perspective.
April 26, 2021
Horkheimer & Adorno located the seeds of modernism’s own destruction in humanity's dislocation in the universality of reason. Berardi attempts to close this prediction as he sees seeds sprout into stalks. If the enlightenment began as a project to exercise science & reason to control the chaos of nature (ostensibly to empower humanity to find freedom), the current stage of techno/neoliberal capitalism has identified human freedom itself as the next frontier of natural chaos that must be controlled & brought under heel.
Science fiction stories such as the Terminator once served as literal warnings of how technology might someday rise up in the form of a rogue Artificially Intelligence robot, subjugating us through violence. It turns out that reality is both much more mundane as well as intractable – it turns out the tools from which we have built towards collective liberation have become so complex & unwieldly that they can only respond to the cybernetic control of the digitized market. Democracy, meant in a broad sense as the ability of a society to govern itself, is an impossibility as capital responsive technologies have overgrown our social worlds.
Berardi introduces an introducing paradox – as humanity increasingly submits itself to the techno rhythm of universal digitization, instantaneous access, and total tech knowledge, humanity begins to increasingly cultivate attachments to locality & identity. In this way, he dismisses the identarian turn linking it directly to the logic of the Holocaust – oversimplifying to the point where I find fault in his argument. But by explanating the rise of totalitarianism from modernity itself (and now what Soshana Zuboff would call instrumentarianism), he provides explanatory power to its origins & why there is so much uncertainty, confusion, and skepticism in this field of social conflict.
I read this booklet about the same time I read Surveillance Capitalism (Zuboff) – a wider treatment of growing power being cultivated by Silicon Valley tech giants. Though coming from a more abstract place, Birardi’s book has significant overlap in theme & subject matter. And while I really enjoyed it – and will perhaps study it further in the future – the 150 pages of the booklet could alternatively be distilled down into the credo: “things are hopeless. Nurturing your own spirit is the only political agency we have left in this current moment.”
While I am surely mischaracterizing his thesis by ignoring nuance (and perhaps being weak by preferring a tone of analysis that feels more familiar), I still cannot shake a preference for the hopeful optimism of Zuboff to Berardi. She does not abandon the Enlightenment but rather props it up with the hopeful possibility that humanity’s project can advance if we reclaim knowledge & political will to address the problems of machine control.
In contrast, this is Berardi in the closing chapter:
Yikes. Put into context, below he wraps up the thought…
Is this poetry or a disgusting philosophy justifying complete political apathy in our hell world? Should we abandon the enlightenment even though we have nothing else or use its tools to advance a harm reduction agenda? Regardless of your take to these macro questions, the questions are thought provoking
I must admit, I do not entirely understand Berardi’s cursory references to Deleuze & Guattari concepts of “Chaosmosis” as developed in A Thousand Plateaus, a book far from my bookshelf due to its famed for its inaccessibility. And, likewise, his conversations around rhythm and breathing were both poetically beautiful yet hard to take anything concrete away from. I may someday go back to read more carefully these early & closing chapters - perhaps with some companion reading in some of his original sources cited to more fully appreciate the poetry.
But I suppose this also is adjacent to the purpose of his book – to call out the tragic exhaustion of possible solutions to our predicament in the current semiotic space, and to point us towards somewhere beyond – something unsaid, unimagined, and currently thought to be possible that may someday emerge from the rhythms of chaos which grow in our world. Rather than tuning our personal vibrations to those of the system (through things like careerism, sustainable capitalism, social media, identarian outrage, renewable investments, etc. etc. etc. – all of which aims to control these rhythms of chaos to the a systemic tempo) – we should tune into the rhythm in the chaos, and breath.
If anyone can figure out what that means...
Science fiction stories such as the Terminator once served as literal warnings of how technology might someday rise up in the form of a rogue Artificially Intelligence robot, subjugating us through violence. It turns out that reality is both much more mundane as well as intractable – it turns out the tools from which we have built towards collective liberation have become so complex & unwieldly that they can only respond to the cybernetic control of the digitized market. Democracy, meant in a broad sense as the ability of a society to govern itself, is an impossibility as capital responsive technologies have overgrown our social worlds.
In a 1946 text titled The Question of German Guilt, Karl Jaspers distinguished between historical Nazism and quintessential Nazism. Historical Nazism has been defeated, he says, but the cult of efficiency has not been, and this cult of efficiency is the core of quintessential Nazism. Economic competition does not accept any political regulation, any ethical limitation: cynicism, the systematic disregard for ethics, is a common feature of Nazism and the neoliberal cult of competition. The difference lies in the fact that Nazism was based on political violence and military dictatorship, while today’s global competition is based on the embedding of technological automatisms into the living body of society.
Berardi introduces an introducing paradox – as humanity increasingly submits itself to the techno rhythm of universal digitization, instantaneous access, and total tech knowledge, humanity begins to increasingly cultivate attachments to locality & identity. In this way, he dismisses the identarian turn linking it directly to the logic of the Holocaust – oversimplifying to the point where I find fault in his argument. But by explanating the rise of totalitarianism from modernity itself (and now what Soshana Zuboff would call instrumentarianism), he provides explanatory power to its origins & why there is so much uncertainty, confusion, and skepticism in this field of social conflict.
I read this booklet about the same time I read Surveillance Capitalism (Zuboff) – a wider treatment of growing power being cultivated by Silicon Valley tech giants. Though coming from a more abstract place, Birardi’s book has significant overlap in theme & subject matter. And while I really enjoyed it – and will perhaps study it further in the future – the 150 pages of the booklet could alternatively be distilled down into the credo: “things are hopeless. Nurturing your own spirit is the only political agency we have left in this current moment.”
While I am surely mischaracterizing his thesis by ignoring nuance (and perhaps being weak by preferring a tone of analysis that feels more familiar), I still cannot shake a preference for the hopeful optimism of Zuboff to Berardi. She does not abandon the Enlightenment but rather props it up with the hopeful possibility that humanity’s project can advance if we reclaim knowledge & political will to address the problems of machine control.
In contrast, this is Berardi in the closing chapter:
“This is why the rebels who marched against the G7 summit in Hamburg in July 2017 carried a banner welcoming everybody to hell. The question that we must answer now is, can we speak of ethical behavior in hell? The first answer that comes to my mind is no. No, because in hell empathy is self-harming. Empathic sensibility, in fact, is an open door to the inflow of surrounding suffering. This is why in hell people tend to keep to themselves and tend to close their empathic doors—in order to avoid being harmed by the spreading violence and surrounding suffering.”
Yikes. Put into context, below he wraps up the thought…
Since this book is about breathing as a vibrational search to attune oneself to one’s environment, I must say at this point that in the social sphere (the sphere of conspiration) this search is currently destined to fail. People feel this impossibility and they tend to become selfish and cynical, and therefore depressed and self-loathing. Since solidarity has been cancelled, only revenge is left: revenge of the impoverished against the oppressed (racism), revenge of the oppressed against women (macho violence), revenge of everybody against everybody else (brutality).
So I’m trying to displace the field of the vibrational search from social conspiration to cosmic expiration, to the dissolution of the individual (me) into the cosmic dimension of nothingness. What is the rhythm of nothingness? Orgasmic vibration is an example of attuning with the bio- rhythms of another body: sinking into unconsciousness may suddenly fling wide the doors of cosmic perception. The French call orgasm petite mort (little death), meaning an intense momentary loss or weakening of consciousness that enables a vision of nothingness and simultaneously opens the possibility of listening to the sound of chaosmosis.
Philosophy must consciously forge concepts for the attunement of the mind and body to the process of becoming nothingness. Poetry has to prepare our lungs to breathe at the rhythm of death.
Is this poetry or a disgusting philosophy justifying complete political apathy in our hell world? Should we abandon the enlightenment even though we have nothing else or use its tools to advance a harm reduction agenda? Regardless of your take to these macro questions, the questions are thought provoking
I must admit, I do not entirely understand Berardi’s cursory references to Deleuze & Guattari concepts of “Chaosmosis” as developed in A Thousand Plateaus, a book far from my bookshelf due to its famed for its inaccessibility. And, likewise, his conversations around rhythm and breathing were both poetically beautiful yet hard to take anything concrete away from. I may someday go back to read more carefully these early & closing chapters - perhaps with some companion reading in some of his original sources cited to more fully appreciate the poetry.
But I suppose this also is adjacent to the purpose of his book – to call out the tragic exhaustion of possible solutions to our predicament in the current semiotic space, and to point us towards somewhere beyond – something unsaid, unimagined, and currently thought to be possible that may someday emerge from the rhythms of chaos which grow in our world. Rather than tuning our personal vibrations to those of the system (through things like careerism, sustainable capitalism, social media, identarian outrage, renewable investments, etc. etc. etc. – all of which aims to control these rhythms of chaos to the a systemic tempo) – we should tune into the rhythm in the chaos, and breath.
If anyone can figure out what that means...
February 25, 2023
Este libro es un análisis del caos contemporáneo y la opción de la poesía como representación de la imaginación y de la utopía como una manera de ampliar el lenguaje y crear las potencias. La poesía es importante porque nos ayuda a respirar de otra manera. Esa es una imagen más poderosa. Vale la pena revisarlo y repensar la poesía desde ahí.
June 13, 2022
well it reminded me to read more holderlin at least
January 29, 2025
Pura jerga incomprensible e innecesaria, el libro entero es una metáfora estirada hasta el absurdo.
April 18, 2025
Sin embargo
por cuánto no siempre es posible
recordar el por qué
no podemos olvidar
que una vez fuimos felices
por cuánto no siempre es posible
recordar el por qué
no podemos olvidar
que una vez fuimos felices
Read
September 25, 2023soo good but wtf not a single woman in the 100000 of straight white male references... until the last 10 pages where he throws Octavia Butler in...
July 27, 2021
This book was brought to my attention following a series of events that landed me in a central London museum centered around the visual representation of chaos and anxiety. It was there that a quote from this book caught my attention, and I added the book to my list with the ambition of reading it later.
This book is overloaded with academic vocabulary and references to generationally old texts, making it hard to follow at times. The central message is also distinctly hard to decipher, as it’s one that’s profoundly unique and I will do my very best to convey my interpretation.
The author makes the point that our minds are inherently bounded by language, as language is bounded by interpretation and perception. In order to extract increased meaning from our language, we look to poetry, with its ability to transcend basic consciousness and measure, as our gateway into entering a true rhythm. This ‘rhythm’ which evolves in an innate fashion like that of the cosmos, yields a more natural existence than restrictive, post-industrial capitalism, which has turned humans into scapegoating, anxiety-ridden prisoners of their own minds.
Achieving this incredibly difficult task — which entails following a poetic, divine rhythm to disconnect from noise and chaos — is how we truly ‘breathe’ as humans.
When the book connects theory with the physical world, we see a fair bit of brilliance: “Those who wage war against chaos will be defeated, as chaos feeds on war. When chaos is swallowing the mind (including the social mind), we should not be afraid of it, we should not strive to subjugate chaos to that order. That will not work, because chaos is stronger than order. So, we should make friends with chaos, and in the whirlwind we should look for the superior order that chaos brings in itself.”
I found it contradictory to address specific political concerns while discussing the increasing importance of disconnecting from such affairs. I found it completely bombastic in its use of academic language and psychology terms. It was a tough read aiming to find the solution to unhealthy post-modernism in the 21st century; attacking such an issue will always be difficult.
Not sure that I would recommend it. 3/5
This book is overloaded with academic vocabulary and references to generationally old texts, making it hard to follow at times. The central message is also distinctly hard to decipher, as it’s one that’s profoundly unique and I will do my very best to convey my interpretation.
The author makes the point that our minds are inherently bounded by language, as language is bounded by interpretation and perception. In order to extract increased meaning from our language, we look to poetry, with its ability to transcend basic consciousness and measure, as our gateway into entering a true rhythm. This ‘rhythm’ which evolves in an innate fashion like that of the cosmos, yields a more natural existence than restrictive, post-industrial capitalism, which has turned humans into scapegoating, anxiety-ridden prisoners of their own minds.
Achieving this incredibly difficult task — which entails following a poetic, divine rhythm to disconnect from noise and chaos — is how we truly ‘breathe’ as humans.
When the book connects theory with the physical world, we see a fair bit of brilliance: “Those who wage war against chaos will be defeated, as chaos feeds on war. When chaos is swallowing the mind (including the social mind), we should not be afraid of it, we should not strive to subjugate chaos to that order. That will not work, because chaos is stronger than order. So, we should make friends with chaos, and in the whirlwind we should look for the superior order that chaos brings in itself.”
I found it contradictory to address specific political concerns while discussing the increasing importance of disconnecting from such affairs. I found it completely bombastic in its use of academic language and psychology terms. It was a tough read aiming to find the solution to unhealthy post-modernism in the 21st century; attacking such an issue will always be difficult.
Not sure that I would recommend it. 3/5
May 13, 2019
A welcome mix of critical analysis and poetic thought, with a eye on emancipation.
"Poetry is the excess which breaks the limit and escapes measure. The ambiguousness of poetical words, indeed, may be defined as semantic overinclusiveness. … Excessiveness is the condition of revelation, of emancipation from established meaning and of the disclosure of an unseen horizon of signification: the possible" (p.20).
"Poetry is the excess which breaks the limit and escapes measure. The ambiguousness of poetical words, indeed, may be defined as semantic overinclusiveness. … Excessiveness is the condition of revelation, of emancipation from established meaning and of the disclosure of an unseen horizon of signification: the possible" (p.20).
December 27, 2022
listening to bifo go on about europe in 68, america in the 80s, and how kids are soft because they take too much therapy...it just started to sound silly after a while. i welcome challenging ideas, but this felt half-assed. the passion's there, but the writing ain't.
January 20, 2019
We're in interesting times.
July 17, 2024
"Filosofia trebuie să fabrice în mod conștient concepte pentru acordarea minții și corpului la procesul devenirii-nimic. Poezia trebuie să ne pregătească plămânii să respire după ritmul morții."
February 15, 2025
Neat! Bifo writes in a way that I find to be compelling, and while Breathing reminded me of The Contortionist Whispers by Will Alexander - both for its exploration of the contemporary psychosphere and providing answers to the question of "What is to be done?" within the current chaotic maelstrom we find ourselves living within - I found Bifo tended to hold my attention more. Perhaps this is related to having a greater attention span for philosophy rather than poetry at the moment, but I think that I was able to follow Bifo's arguments better and contextualize what I disagreed with in Breathing more easily than in The Contortionist Whispers. Breathing was also just a really fun read coming off of The Fire Next Time offering both cultural and religious commentary (or perhaps mystic philosophy, as I see Bifo's gnostic conclusions as a religious project because that's how I understand it I'm too steeped in the weird shit, but Bifo doesn't present his conclusions as such.)
Anyways, What's Bifo's project, because I'm going to want to come back to this book report to understand it in two years and remember why I liked it so much? Quite simply (and perhaps that's what I appreciate the most about Breathing, it it's simplicity) it's to breath together, to conspirate (please do your best Ivan Illitch impression every time I use the word conspirate because I sure did, and it's silly as hell,) to spread calm in person together in order to open the way for collective imagining and ideally producing alternative social forms which sooth our desires for consistency and continuity taken from us by the economization of all of life. Bifo points to a lack of belonging or an isolation brought upon by both digital and economic controls, and lacking communal activity based in solidarity. These lacks (along with a impotence at being able to control our lives, a lacking of agency) brought about by the realization of the enlightenment project attempting to prevent chaos via pure rationality and encoding results in a desire for revenge due o humiliation, misery, and impotence. For these reasons Bifo suggests we're seeing the rise of suicide by terror, fascism due to a longing to belong to a national or racial community of which these promised communities have yet to actually manifest, as well as an embracing of identity as a well defined box one is rather than as a living culture one participates in.
A delightful book for it's outlining of what we have lost in this modern age of computers and competition; friendship based on freedom and desire, a life of adventure, community, solidarity, and agency in our lives. In this outlining of what has been lost, Bifo charts a path for modern picarios (searchers) those who have nothing and are searching for everything, foremost who search for themselves, to begin the path of opening collective imagination to begin the path of building what has been lost. However, Bifo also presents an extremely depressing collective set of principals in the final chapter Expiration which you can take or leave. I found that I am drawn to James Baldwin and Gunther Anders's weak messianic positions more to my taste compared with Bifo's philisophical pessimism in the face of the racial nightmare of the United States, and the dual inescapable problems of the modern atomic holocaust and climate collapse respectively.
Bifo is for the girlies who love Arthur Schopenhauer, Eugene Thacker, and Thomas Lingotti. So, be prepared for reading some really depressing philosophy, because Bifo's analysis of what has been taken in the name of progress is very intriguing.
Anyways, What's Bifo's project, because I'm going to want to come back to this book report to understand it in two years and remember why I liked it so much? Quite simply (and perhaps that's what I appreciate the most about Breathing, it it's simplicity) it's to breath together, to conspirate (please do your best Ivan Illitch impression every time I use the word conspirate because I sure did, and it's silly as hell,) to spread calm in person together in order to open the way for collective imagining and ideally producing alternative social forms which sooth our desires for consistency and continuity taken from us by the economization of all of life. Bifo points to a lack of belonging or an isolation brought upon by both digital and economic controls, and lacking communal activity based in solidarity. These lacks (along with a impotence at being able to control our lives, a lacking of agency) brought about by the realization of the enlightenment project attempting to prevent chaos via pure rationality and encoding results in a desire for revenge due o humiliation, misery, and impotence. For these reasons Bifo suggests we're seeing the rise of suicide by terror, fascism due to a longing to belong to a national or racial community of which these promised communities have yet to actually manifest, as well as an embracing of identity as a well defined box one is rather than as a living culture one participates in.
A delightful book for it's outlining of what we have lost in this modern age of computers and competition; friendship based on freedom and desire, a life of adventure, community, solidarity, and agency in our lives. In this outlining of what has been lost, Bifo charts a path for modern picarios (searchers) those who have nothing and are searching for everything, foremost who search for themselves, to begin the path of opening collective imagination to begin the path of building what has been lost. However, Bifo also presents an extremely depressing collective set of principals in the final chapter Expiration which you can take or leave. I found that I am drawn to James Baldwin and Gunther Anders's weak messianic positions more to my taste compared with Bifo's philisophical pessimism in the face of the racial nightmare of the United States, and the dual inescapable problems of the modern atomic holocaust and climate collapse respectively.
Bifo is for the girlies who love Arthur Schopenhauer, Eugene Thacker, and Thomas Lingotti. So, be prepared for reading some really depressing philosophy, because Bifo's analysis of what has been taken in the name of progress is very intriguing.
February 6, 2024
this is awful. and i say that as a huge fan of semiotext(e) and much of the theory this work references.
these sentences are just claims, hurled willy nilly (why do we define “signification” on the second to last page??). even once you get past that, the claims are a complete mess - one second we are embracing micropolitics as a positive nihilism in a doomed world, the next second we are breathing happiness through political movements.
overall, this just feels like a guy trying to get through all of his opinions and justify them. some are interesting (i liked the note on panlogisms) but most are just opinions presented as fact.
i would be particularly remiss to not discuss breathing’s horrible treatment of what we may call “identity” in the books terms. while identity is both socially constructed and used as a weapon of neoliberalism, that does not necessarily make it useless or counterproductive to use as a vector of analysis. marxists have been showing for years that even though, say, race may exist superstructurally, it is still expressed and interpollated materially. the anti-black violence experienced by eric garner is only intelligible through his “identity” and position relative to blackness. but instead berardi tries to equivocate his own asthma to garners. come on.
these sentences are just claims, hurled willy nilly (why do we define “signification” on the second to last page??). even once you get past that, the claims are a complete mess - one second we are embracing micropolitics as a positive nihilism in a doomed world, the next second we are breathing happiness through political movements.
overall, this just feels like a guy trying to get through all of his opinions and justify them. some are interesting (i liked the note on panlogisms) but most are just opinions presented as fact.
i would be particularly remiss to not discuss breathing’s horrible treatment of what we may call “identity” in the books terms. while identity is both socially constructed and used as a weapon of neoliberalism, that does not necessarily make it useless or counterproductive to use as a vector of analysis. marxists have been showing for years that even though, say, race may exist superstructurally, it is still expressed and interpollated materially. the anti-black violence experienced by eric garner is only intelligible through his “identity” and position relative to blackness. but instead berardi tries to equivocate his own asthma to garners. come on.
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March 9, 2025i've always liked Bifo's attention to the neuropsychological consequences of automatism but he misses the mark on any kind of race + queer dimension of analysis in this one.. he seems to argue for the complete renunciation of "identity" as a "ruse," a snagging of our ability to imagine the future on the past / memory. our ability to imagine the future undergirds the cultural divide between "those who are culturally unable to come to terms with the processes of globalization and urban minorities who are culturally prepared to do so" (132). i agree with his critique re: the dialectic of identitarian reaction and false universality of capital accumulation, but he ignores the material consequences of interpellation and the ways in which minoritarian subjects must negotiate identity. i think this really informs the end of the book, where he argues that we must have "humility" — we must try to attune ourselves to the nothingness we will become, to share this tending toward death with others. not sure how useful this view is in light of the asymmetricality of death, but generally, i enjoyed this book — thinking a lot about revenge, humility, and impotence in relation to acts of violence now, a thread i feel that his new essay on luigi mangione in e-flux teases out.
January 30, 2025
So basically we’re f*cked is what Berardi is saying. Society and humans have lost the ability to “breathe” together, and live with sympathy and understanding. It’s a competitive individualistic world we live in, and technology has affected our ability to form meaningful connections with others, as well as our ability to really see and appreciate the world/nature. We only have one.
I both love and hate when I read a book for a theory/criticism course and it makes me feel EVERYTHING. Kinda feel helpless about the world sometimes but I also get pissed off and realize that I we can make change if we really try!
I both love and hate when I read a book for a theory/criticism course and it makes me feel EVERYTHING. Kinda feel helpless about the world sometimes but I also get pissed off and realize that I we can make change if we really try!
October 8, 2022
First half of the book, the four chapters, was better than the second half; in the former part, the author was able to disguise himself behind the abstract terms, but in the latter half every sentence he formed signs to the evident fact that he is a baby boomer. I didn't know anything about the author before this book, and after reading those sentences I have just checked to verify the obvious; truly, I am amazed at the entitlement which boomers find in themselves to rationalize a sphere of time which they are involved only peripherally. It was just embarrassing.
February 22, 2025
This nihilism is confused, but Bifo is not confused about nihilism. Super legible and concise. I found this overview helpful, obviously highlighting the decline of social consciousness paralleling with Neoliberalism’s obsession with optimizing technology, turning life into its most unbearable form. Breathing probed insights into thinking about the role of irony and authenticity has, following magic/poetry/uncertainty, and evading the limiting structure of industrial time-life-society. Kind of sad I am finished reading it as I could read it again and probably find new insights to these ideas.
April 13, 2025
This book felt like a clutching, abreast the spiral of violence and uncertainty. A spark, a fueling breath, a vision of optimism, alighted. In breathing there is what humility can transform of violent abstraction: acceptance, clarity, understanding, becoming.
We can “happily walk over this abyss if [we] understand that friendship resides in the ability to share the illusion of meaning. When illusion of meaning is shared, it is no longer illusion: it becomes reality”
We can “happily walk over this abyss if [we] understand that friendship resides in the ability to share the illusion of meaning. When illusion of meaning is shared, it is no longer illusion: it becomes reality”
November 18, 2025
Birçok yeni kavramla karşılaştım. Sonra hepsi hem birbiri ile hem gündelik hayatta üzerine düşündüğüm ve çevremde dikkatimi çeken birçok “anlamlandırma biçimi” ile bağlandı. Enteresan bir deneyim olarak değerlendirdim açıkçası okuma sürecimi.
Ayrıca Rilke alıntıları beni görünce ayrı bir mutlu etti :) [kişisel zevkler]
Ayrıca Rilke alıntıları beni görünce ayrı bir mutlu etti :) [kişisel zevkler]
August 12, 2020
Berardi doesn't offer a solution to the abyss we find ourselves in right now. He describes it deeply and from many different angles. And in the end, he offers a bridge--an unexpected, but familiar forgotten bridge.
December 21, 2024
Ensaio absolutamente fantástico, fico contente que as aulas de TC e CL tenham servido para algo. Validação sobre a maneira como vejo as coisas, boas analogias e análise para a realidade e futuro, alguma paz de espírito com o caos da existência capital (mais ou menos)
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December 7, 2019'Friendship is the condition for the experience - the existence - of meaning.'
January 10, 2020
Bifo is a great diagnostician—the therapeutic solutions he offers feel less like solutions than they do extensions of his diagnoses but he is fun to read.
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